


Till the end

by irisdouglasiana



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, this is sad and i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 18:03:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14550285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: It all feels like a dream sometimes.





	Till the end

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: discussions of death and dying.

**June 1998**

Daniel wakes up to the sound of the heart monitor, the nurses talking quietly in the hall, the endless murmur of the television in the next room. Even with all the machines he’s hooked up to, every breath is a struggle. Lungs failing, heart failing. The doctors come in and ask questions and write down their notes, and they are helpful and honest, but there is no polite way around it. He is dying. Somehow, it isn’t so bad.

In this space between life and death, time has little meaning anymore, and his eyes play tricks on him. Once, out of the corner of his eye he sees his father standing at the window, back turned, a silhouette in the moonlight. Suddenly it’s the spring of 1945, and his father steps away from the window and comes to sit beside his hospital bed. The old man looks exhausted—bags under his eyes, shoulders slumped. _It’ll be okay_ , he says to Daniel, _you’re gonna be okay_. Daniel looks away, because the war is still raging on the other side of the world, and the guys he served with are still being shot at and bombed, and some of them aren’t ever coming home to their parents and their wives and their kids, and here he is flat on his back with his leg gone, and there is nothing _okay_ about any of those things. And then he blinks and realizes, no, that was over fifty years ago, and his father isn’t there. Only shadows.

 _It’ll be okay_ , he says now to the son and daughter he never thought he would have. Not kids anymore, but it feels like only yesterday he was holding them in his arms. Watching them learn to crawl, then walk, then run. At some point he could no longer keep up with them. How had the time gone by so quickly? And he sees them now, Maria pacing restlessly around the room, Michael sitting and watching, always keeping an eye on the monitors. Daniel knows they don’t believe him. _It’ll be okay_ , he tells them anyway.

Jack comes to visit. They share sips of bourbon from the flask he smuggled into the hospital. _Marge is gonna kill me for this_ , he says conspiratorially, looking around the room as if Peggy might jump out from behind the door at any moment and tackle him, and Daniel laughs until he starts to cough again. They don’t talk about death, but they talk about regrets and things left unfinished. They’ve come a long way, the two of them. Jack stays until the nurses kick him out, and then he puts on his hat, gets up with a groan, and gives him a small wave, and they say their goodbyes. _See you around, Sousa._  

There have been so many people he has said goodbye to. His parents. Colleagues. Friends. As the years go by, there are more and more of these farewells. This is the sweetness and the sorrow of living; that paths come together and then must diverge. And yet the separation is never complete. Peoples’ lives do not run in parallel, with a finite beginning and end, but overlap and intertwine and embrace each other.

 _I’m in this with you till the end_ , he told Peggy once, all those years ago. Back then it had been an abstraction, but now it feels real. It makes every moment with her that much more precious. She is at his side constantly, so much that he gets worried about her and sends her away to get some food and sleep. When she returns, she tells him about the new SHIELD recruits and complain about meetings and the endless bureaucracy. Forever carrying the world on her shoulders, just as she’s always done. He tells her he wishes there was more he could do, and she shakes her head. She rubs her thumb in circles in the palm of his hand and looks off into the distance, to somewhere he can’t follow.

It all feels like a dream sometimes.

From his bed, he travels back and forth in time with her. To opposite sides of the table in the interrogation room at the old SSR office in New York, now long gone. To a surveillance van in Los Angeles, her hand on top of his. To their first dance together at a jazz club downtown, the last song of the night, measured and slow. To their wedding—she had been so radiant it took his breath away. To everything that came afterwards, good and bad alike.

For a long time, Daniel had divided his life into two parts: before the war, and after. Before Bastogne, and after. He and Peggy had been in Belgium on a case some thirty years ago, and their work happened to take them through the countryside, through the green fields and the barns, the churches and the lush forests. All of it pulling him back into the past. As they drove, he remembered those hills covered in snow, the cold bitter wind, the rounds of machine gun fire, the smoke rising from the craters left behind by the bombs. The craters were still there, but grass and wildflowers had bloomed from within, vibrant and full of life. Even in this place, death had not triumphed. Peggy brought the car to a stop as a flock of sheep crossed the road. She took Daniel’s hand and smiled. _All right?_

_Yeah. I’m all right._

And it wasn’t always true, but in that moment it was, and that was enough. The last of the sheep finally crossed the road and over the hill, and they kept driving until they left Bastogne behind them. After that, he didn’t separate his life into before and after Bastogne, but before and after Peggy Carter.

 _I need you to promise me something_ , he says on one of those days when she is particularly quiet.

_Anything for you, Daniel._

_After I die, I want you to go easy on yourself. Don’t work yourself to death. Let other people take care of you._ He’s seen her bury herself in work when she’s hurting. He’s seen her take her grief and her guilt and tuck it deep inside herself. He knows how much it has cost her.

Her smile is strained. _Nonsense. I can take care of myself._

_I know you can, dearest. But you don’t always have to._

Peggy swallows. _I don’t want you to leave me_ , she confesses at last, her voice barely more than a whisper.

 _I’ll still be with you_ , he tells her, squeezing her hand. _It’ll be okay._

She closes her eyes and sighs. _I know, my love_ , she says. _I know._


End file.
